A Nice Change
I will admit that it’s nice, for a change, to have election candidates coming to MY front door, instead of me badgering them, as I have done for many years via emails, telephone calls and meetings. So far, I have met with four of our candidates and each time I’ve began with the sentence:
“If I am to vote for you and you are to represent me and the other 5% of your electorate who live with diabetes, here’s what you need to know about diabetes services in this area and nationally”
I have been using this opportunity to discuss our local issues in the midwest, I am asking for an additional diabetes nurse specialist and a dietitian as our solution to the fact that the University of Limerick hospital group is the only hospital group in Ireland who don’t offer insulin pump therapy as a treatment option for adults with type 1 diabetes and also doesn’t offer structured diabetes education which includes dose adjusting insulin for your needs. The solution to this issue is having a diabetes insulin pump nurse and a dietitian included in the diabetes team in University of Limerick hospital.
How We Can Use Our Voices
I’ve found all the information I needed to discuss this in this report and in answers to Parliamentary Questions which are posted online here. Our groups knows from our discussions with people with diabetes in our online forums that there are many issues important to you including access to the Freestyle Libre, Continuous Glucose Monitors, Insulin pumps and also basic requirements such as access to structured diabetes education, psychology support, dietitians, etc.
The Diabetes Ireland Advocacy group (see more information about this group below) feels that having more Diabetes Nurse Specialists and Dietitians in ALL of our local hospitals would go a long way to addressing a lot of our issues.
This is also your opportunity to tell your TD your personal diabetes story and any issues you have in your local service. This is the only time that your TD will come to you: Use it!
Ask your candidate:
If elected, what will you do to get an extra Diabetes Nurse Specialist and a Dietitian for my local diabetes hospital team?
And, Will you join the Diabetes Cross Party Parliamentary Group in Leinster House?
** Please share with anyone you know who had diabetes or who would be willing to speak up on behalf of diabetes.
Why do we need this?
As a community, we feel that in the past 3 years:
Diabetes has become less of an HSE priority
This needs to change for the 220,000 people living with diabetes in Ireland today and for the 12,000 to 14,000 new diagnosis each year.
Invest Wisely
The health service continues to spend most of the diabetes budget on treating life altering diabetes complications without investing in care delivery which would prevent many of those complications.
Not enough Staff
A national survey published in 2018 showed severe deficiencies in the staffing of our hospital-based diabetes teams. The findings of this report are not being addressed and we need political support to address the various issues. See full report here -
Consultant Endocrinologists 72% deficit
Psychologists 95% deficit
Dietitians 74% deficit
Podiatrists 32% deficit
Specialist Diabetes Nurses 19% deficit
Saturday 8th February is an important date but all of the days between now and then are equally important as this is our opportunity to #TalkAboutDiabetes
Please see additional information here on Diabetes Ireland’s website.
Where is all this coming from?
The Diabetes Ireland Advocacy group was set up in February 2019 and formalised in September 2019. We are a group of ten to fifteen people with diabetes chaired by Kieran O’Leary, CEO of Diabetes Ireland.
Our agenda for every meeting revolves around what we feel is important to the majority of people with diabetes in Ireland and an update on the progress Diabetes Ireland has made on all of our issues.
At our last meeting in September, we discussed a plan for using the upcoming election to highlight all the issues we have in diabetes care in Ireland and to get people talking to their election candidates about it. And even though the nation’s media have been talking about our upcoming general election for many months, our group of volunteers, none of whom have any experience in lobbying, campaigning, etc, was taken by surprise at how quickly it all evolved. BUT! That did not deter us and t was a bit of a scurry in the end to create something that we felt all people with diabetes could support but we did it.
The aim of this campaign is to highlight to our election candidates the lack of resources in current HSE diabetes services and once in government, what we expect them to do about it.
Photo Credit - https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=172080&picture=whats-your-story